Cirque de la Lune: 2008

Piscina Nadya; October 18, 2008

STREET x5:

Conceal x3 (Pisces isn't publicly taking credit for the circus.)

Pisces is spending most of her time pounding the streets, gathering up buskers, street theater troupes, artists, and creative hobos of all shapes and sizes to recreate the Cirque de la Lune: the Halloween circus that she inspired and coordinated last year. She is keeping a particular eye out for people with stage experience with sword fighting. At his request, she introduces Ander to any tumblers, acrobats, or break dancers she finds and lets him help with the show.

She's asking Sandy and Zaihd to help her, since they did such a wonderful job in it last year. She asks Sandy in particular to be in charge of coordinating the jugglers. Pisces gets people to dig out the old costumes they used last year and work with the artists and amateur theater people to patch and improve them. She digs out her old stash of masks and distributes them appropriately. Butterfly to Sandy, Fox to Zahid, Firebird to Raina. She buys some new masks while shopping for supplies. She considers purchasing two masks for herself...

...but eventually decides she shouldn't encourage her own delusions of having multiple personalities. And certainly shouldn't try to decide which one should wear the black mask. In the end, she decides to go with something a little more integrated.

Shut up, McClin.

She checks to see if the old factory warehouse she used last time is still good, and sends people out looking for another one if it isn't. When she finds a site, she has words with the gang in the area about not making any trouble for this community event, particularly on Halloween. She enlists last year's troupe of carpenter-gang-members to make sure it's safe.

Like last year, she divides whatever space she finds into various sections using heavy, sound dampening cloth backdrops. However, this year, she's only going to take direct control over the feel and coordination of the first part of this haunted warehouse. She's going to leave the other sections, the ones that were the dark circus and the haunted house last year, to the creative imaginations of other street theater people. She'll keep an eye on what they're doing to make sure it's not dangerous, but otherwise let them create something themselves.

She's going to structure the first area like a circus, but one where the performers mingle constantly with the audience. It will have a "pit" that's really just a delineated space in the center and be surrounded by chairs for the tumblers, jugglers, joke tellers, actors, music makers, and magicians to rest in while not performing in the center. The chair circle will be surrounded by an area for people to walk or sit. There is a loose schedule for when each group or actor is to leap into the center and become the main attraction, but the idea is that things are constantly happening all around the room. A man telling jokes in the center while two jugglers idly toss balls to each other from their chairs while a fiddle player on the other side of the room provides music. Most of the performers will be costumed and masked.

Once things are set up, a lot of time will go into practicing, making sure this event is coordinated chaos instead of just chaos. Pisces herself isn't going to perform, but she will flit around the room, making sure things are running smoothly, making sure people aren't getting in each other's way or overpowering each other, and watching everything. She'll take rests often and let other people handle things. Particularly during the day.

She still has that devil mask she bought on a whim last year. She hangs it on a nail in one of the areas made private by hanging cloth. She buys or borrows a fiddle and leans it against the wall beneath the mask. She hides one of her extra cell phones inside the fiddle case—the hook in her whimsical Willie trap.

Influence Response:

Setup goes moderately smoothly. You whisk away several interested buskers, street performers, and whatnots in the city to perform. The old warehouse is acquired and set up as you like. Money is going to be a little tight this year in that some things you thought were reusable got lost or damaged somehow (i.e. costumes, etc.)

As far as the haunted-house area goes, some creative license needed to be taken with regard to the lack of supplies. Some of your theater kids set up an intense lighting array with a few colored bulbs and blacklights along with a severe amount of curtains. Theater kids + usually scary (but kindly) gang members also helps quite a lot. This is something you probably don't want young children or pregnant mothers to walk through, although it isn't *that* terrifying.